Google is messing with the very foundation of its place on the internet, Search. The company’s new AI Mode basically offers to bring bits of everything from the first page of search results into a conversational answer to any question.
It’s a bit like an augmented version of the AI Overviews we’ve all become familiar with in recent months but with the power of Google’s Gemini AI models breaking down complex topics, comparing options, and providing follow-up answers to your questions.
Instead of the usual top search results, ads, and Reddit posts, you get an answer not too dissimilar from Google Gemini’s interface, but more directly tied to search results. In that way, it’s a bit like Perplexity’s AI search engine.
AI Mode is now available for experimentation, so I threw a handful of questions at it to see how it performed below.
Weekend plans
There’s always a lot going on in my area, but finding information on what’s on can often be tough. Instead of checking six different websites and hoping they’ve been updated, I asked Google through AI Mode: “What are some local events happening in the Hudson Valley this weekend?”
As you can see above, the AI responded almost instantly with a tidy roundup of events. The list of links to the right showed where it was pulling from, and each event had a short description and details of location and time, as well as a hyperlink to where the information came from. The diversity of sources stood out, and I can’t deny it was faster than a regular search plus time spent opening each site to see what was listed.
Meal planning
Staring into your fridge and hoping dinner presents itself is a problem I know oh too well. Instead of succumbing to takeout, this time I decided to play with a somewhat dire example, asking: “I have eggs, spinach, and feta cheese in my fridge. What can I make for dinner?”
AI Mode came back with four examples of meals, briefly describing them, what makes them good, and a sort of overview of a recipe. The AI also put together a nice set of tips for cooking with those ingredients, culled from several websites. Notably, for the full recipe, I would need to click on one of the links. In that way, Google was a little less strict about not needing to leave its services.
Book advice
I decided to conclude my experiment with a favorite kind of search: one for books. I used to ask librarians for suggestions when I was a kid, and I wanted to see how AI Mode did with the kind of question I would ask them (albeit slightly more sophisticated in its wording). Using AI Mode, I asked Google to “Recommend funny fiction novels with fantastic elements or settings.”
The AI provided a list that started with my favorite author and series, Discworld by Terry Pratchett, which admittedly won some points in my mind. The other five suggestions included some I know well, like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, as well as at least one I hadn’t heard of but now plan to check out, Kings of the Wyld by Nicholas Eames.
Each entry came with a short blurb, a note about tone, and links to websites about the books and to lists of similar fare I might enjoy. It’s hardly the most amazing use of AI Mode, but I appreciated how well the list held to my request.
AI Mode isn’t perfect, and frankly, I would miss the serendipity of finding a personal blog or deep-diving a Reddit thread that traditional search encourages. The answers from the AI have a polished, slightly-too-smooth feel that I wouldn’t want from my every online interaction. And I’m very aware that behind this convenience is a system that digests other people’s content and doesn’t always give them their due credit.
I get the appeal of AI Mode in terms of how streamlined it is. However, the disruption it might cause publishers, bloggers, recipe sites, and even local news outlets is unpleasant to consider. If AI Mode becomes the default way we search, as Google seems to want, people may stop clicking through to original sources, which would, of course, mean no new content, just perfectly digested pap from AI.
For the average person with a phone and a question right now, AI Mode may feel like a marvel, but I hope it doesn’t become the default meaning when people say they are going to “Google” something.
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erichs211@gmail.com (Eric Hal Schwartz)
